[MENTION=5789]Beefeater[/MENTION], perhaps you did not see because my post was at the end of a page, but I did in fact respond to your debate point.
Will you tell me why goodness matters from a materialist atheistic world view?
Will anyone?
Can anyone?
skylights said:
Beefeater said:
If there is no God then we are all just the consequence of chemical reactions. There is no inherent difference between birth and murder.
Besides in the stirrings we feel in response to the advent of new life and the loss of someone close and meaningful to us; besides in the difference between pleasure and pain; besides in the difference between creating a world that is safe and truthful and kind and one that is tormented and deceitful and unfair; besides in making life something we want to live versus something we want to run from.
The existence of God makes little difference in the basic tenet that we should live a moral life.
My point is that over and over again atheists want to use Christian morality to condemn christianity withou having a meaningful basis in morality themselves. In a sense they step out of atheist worldview and into the Christian worldview, where goodness matters. They attack the Christian worldview saying it's bad and then step back into the atheist worldview where goodness and badness don't matter. They never actually defend atheism and a world where goodness doesn't matter.
I am not an atheist, but I do not believe that the bolded is a viewpoint that many hold. I am close to several agnostic atheists who are very concerned with morality and ethics despite no preexisting religious moral framework. The fact is that beyond specifics, there is a large pool of actions and viewpoints that
almost every person can agree on being "good". These are the concepts that reoccur throughout cultures: the inherent goodness of new life, of strong familial, romantic, and platonic relationships, awareness of others, balance, freedom of expression and creativity, self-representation, self-control, loyalty and fidelity, joy and enthusiasm. These things are Good even from an evolutionary standpoint because they encourage and protect human life. They make a better world for each of us, which in turn makes a better world for all of us (and vice versa).
Essentially - to be a materialist atheist
is not to be an existentialist nihilist.